The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Carol Berg's "The Ornithologist Poems"

The Ornithologist Speaks To Her Desire

and I have eaten of your gossamer-winged
gaze, your azure eyes, your pygmy blues
I have eaten all the milkweed sprinkled in the meadows
where you once scattered your gaze

and I have eaten the long rattling scream from your
nights eaten what you thought you had lost in the empty
church of whispers eaten what you lost in the nave
in the songs in your lost books of psalms

and I have eaten your mourning eaten your wanderings
in the woods of your father I have eaten your curses and
your dreams of the mountain path strewn with pine needles
and your distracted sighs that fall like the sound of a child’s

kite diving in a harsh wind and I have eaten the dark seed
the green bramble the water lily that slowly opens I have
eaten the blackberry that is your mouth oh to have eaten
and to have drank and to take the chosen journey of your mouth

This selection comes from Carol Berg’s chapbook The Ornithologist Poems, available now from Dancing Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!

Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Rogue Agent, DMQ Review, Sou’wester,The Journal, Spillway, Redactions, Radar Poetry, Verse Wisconsin. Her chapbook,Her Vena Amoris (Red Bird Chapbooks), is available and her chapbooks, Ophelia Unraveling and The Ornithologist Poems are available from Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. She was a recipient of a finalist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She blogs here:http://carolbergpoetry.blogspot.com/

Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.